GAO Report Reveals Not Just Mere Duplication, But Unbridled Idiocy

Uncle Sam is spending a lot of your tax dollars on programs that do the exact same thing as other federal programs, and you are paying the tab, a shocking new report shows.

According to a report by the watchdog Government Accounting Office (GAO), Uncle Sam hosts 47 job-training programs, 44 of which do the same things. The federal government also runs 80 programs for what it calls the "transportation disadvantaged." Count ‘em: 80 -- paid for by your tax dollars.

The report cites a total of 82 other programs spread across 10 separate agencies that are supposed to improve what it calls “teacher quality” -- something of concern to local school districts and not Uncle Sam. It’s a classic example of the left hand not being aware of what the right hand is doing, and it’s costing us, the taxpayers, untold billions of our tax dollars.

I agree with penny-wise Republican Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., who was outraged by the scandals uncovered in the report and has vowed “to get our fiscal house in order’ saying "Now again, we have said enough is enough ….”

An equally outraged Oklahoma GOP senator, Tom Coburn, said the report “confirms what most Americans assume about their government. We are spending trillions of dollars every year and nobody knows what we are doing. The executive branch doesn't know. The congressional branch doesn't know. Nobody knows."

The GAO report was mandated by Congress the last time it raised the debt limit in January 2010. Coburn said the report makes lawmakers look like "jackasses."

"We don't know what we're doing," Coburn said.

It’s about time they knew. This is the money we earned by the sweat of our brow and they’re squandering it as if it were their money, not yours and mine.
Think about it. How long would we survive if we spent our money over and over again on the same things at the same time? We’d be in the poor house -- which is where Uncle Sam lives these days while acting as if he is living in a huge mansion and waited upon by his servants, the taxpayers.

This scandal is the result of an inexcusable inattention by the Congress, which in recent years has acted as if it had the power to spend money the U.S. doesn’t have, much of it on worthless programs, and passing the bill on to future generations.

Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 Congressional elections by pledging to trim the government’s sails, seeking out wasteful programs and eliminating them. Republicans plan to cut a whopping $61 billion from the current fiscal year’s budget.